Leaving Atlanta

About this book

An award-winning author makes her fiction debut with the coming-of-age story of three young black children during the Atlanta child murders of 1979.Its summer in Atlanta and black children are disappearing. By the time the heinous killing spree is over 29 will be dead. This haunting menace provides the backdrop to the exquisitely evocative stories of three children fighting the everyday battles of adolescence: Tasha who is coping with her parents separation and the sweet pain of a first crush on a tender boy; Rodney who struggles to make friends and wants only to please his abusive father; and Octavia who faces down the popular crowd at school and must straddle the line between protected and protective daughter. Ultimately these individual stories reveal the loss of innocence that accompanies the passage from childhood to adulthood.